After a rough start, an East-West love affair between a pair of storks in Saxony is bearing visible fruit. Two chicks from a stork nest in the small Saxon town of Mügeln (district of North Saxony) have now been ringed. Unfortunately, only two of the four young storks survived, explained Hans-Jürgen Höhne, chairman of the Mogelin local history association.
After a pair of storks returned from their summer quarters at the end of March, an unusual love drama unfolded in Mügeln. The pair had just settled in when a foreign stork arrived and drove the old stork away. The new stork came to the Free State from Lake Constance, around 600 kilometers away, and was given the name "Bodo" by the local association.
The fire department had arrived especially to register the young storks. They used a ladder to get the two chicks out of the nest, which is around 30 meters high, and placed them in a special box on the ground. There the chicks were given the ring. They were then given the names "Hannah" and "Antonio" by the young firefighters from Oschatz.
"This year, the storks had major problems finding food," explained Höhne. This was mainly due to the many monocultures in the fields and the hard soil.
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